What Labour Engenders1

1. Acknowledgements to Rena Lederman (1986) for inspiration.

: Women and Men, Time and Work in the New Guinea Highlands

Abstract

Debates over equality in New Guinea have raged for years. While people may subscribe to egalitarian values, this seems hollow to some observers in the context of relations between women and men, notably the sexual division of labour. Some even talk of men exploiting the labour of women. This paper considers the validity of these claims in the Was valley of the Southern Highlands Province, using data collected in a time-budget survey to document and assess differences between women's and men's activities. It also reviews ideas of time expended undertaking any activity, and the relevance of notions of work and labour to people's daily routines. It questions the propriety of introducing capitalism's preoccupation with labour. Differences in the activities of women and men, far from evidencing relations of inequality, are significant for such stateless political orders in eschewing hierarchical arrangements, where no one exercises control over resources or capital needed by others to secure livelihoods.

Keywords:

• Economic Anthropology
• Time
• Work
• Gender

Thanks to all those Was valley residents who participated in the time surveys (listed below), and also to an Oxford Institute of Social & Cultural Anthropology seminar for helpful comments on the argument. I also thank Jackie Sillitoe and Robin Wilson for assistance with the time survey data.

Notes

1. Acknowledgements to Rena Lederman (1986) for inspiration.

2. See also Malinowski (1925, pp. 926–30). Subsequent writers have taken a similar line, such as Wallman in a volume on the anthropology of work, who defines work ‘as the production, management and conversion of the resources necessary to livelihood’ (1979, p. 20), and Firth (1979, p. 192) in the same volume, who tells us that the Tikopia had a concept of work, which indicates expenditure of energy for accomplishment of ends, at some sacrifice of comfort or leisure. Panoff (1977, p. 7) glosses work for the Maenge of New Britain as activity aimed at the production of useful things.

3. But men make a contribution too, and the strenuous fits-and-bursts nature of their contributions to cultivation and construction compared to the steady character of women's outlays offsets the difference to some extent (Sillitoe et al. 2002).

4. A recent collection of essays edited by James and Mills (2005) criticises this approach for omitting to consider history as a component of any appreciation of time. The criticism is misplaced, I think, rather like chiding the compilers of today's bus timetables for having no concern with the hostelries of former stage coaches. The implication is not that we should ignore history and mythical time, rather that they are different issues from those of contemporary reckoning and budgeting of time. While awareness of time past will inevitably inform understanding of time present, this is, I propose, a separate matter from the current use of time.

5. I am grateful to all those who participated in the surveys, who received a token payment at the end, for their patience and good humour. The women (numbers in brackets indicate first and second surveys): Maenget Kwalten (1 & 2), Maenget Orlaem (1), Maenget Wariyn (1), Mayka Wen (1 & 2), Mayka Hendep (1 & 2), Mayka Nonk (1 & 2), Mayka Hundbin (1), Mayka Huwn (1), Mayka Lenday (1 & 2), Mayka Puliym (1 & 2), Mayka Morom (1), Mayka Nanainj (1), Mayka Naelomnonk (1 & 2), Mayka Wariyem (2), Puwgael Saliyn (2), Puwgael Piriyn (2), Maenget Ibnawaem (2), Mayka Ebel (2) and Maenget Sal (2). And the men: Huwlael Em (1 & 2), Wenja Olnay (2), Maenget Korobol (2), Puwgael Erow (1 & 2), Ind Mom (2), Wenja Puwn (2), Ind Pes (2), Huwlael Ton (1 & 2), Wenja Yogbal (1 & 2), Kolomb Pet (1 & 2), Mayka Muwlib (2), Maenget Tensgay (2), Huwlael Kot (1), Huwlael Pel (1), Huwlael Lem (1), Wenja Sol (1), Mayka Kot (1), Mayka Pes (1), Mayka Sal (1), Maenget Pundiya (1) and Ind Kobiab (1). I am also grateful to my wife Jackie for helping me with the survey, in particular ensuring the ready co-operation of women.

6. Classified in this analysis according to the task the respondent said she had spent most time engaged on.

7. I have attempted this level of documentation in other work that complements these time survey data (see Sillitoe (1988) on artefacts, Sillitoe et al. (2002) on crop cultivation and Sillitoe (2003) on animal husbandry), such that interested readers can determine the likely proportion of time persons spent on tasks that make up activities, such as manufacturing various artefacts and different crop cultivation and animal husbandry tasks.

8. For further discussion of methodological issues involved in time budget studies, see Carlstein (1982), Gross (1984), Grossman (1984b) and Ulijaszek (1995).

9. A reviewer of this paper suggested that men's rest and social time should distinguish the time they spent gambling, but at the scale of the comparisons attempted here (collecting like activities together into categories) this activity does not show up, with attendance at card games accounting for only seven hours (0.0004 per cent) of their total reported time. In Grossman's (1984a, pp. 216–19) time-use study, card playing together with beer drinking are prominent activities, increasing with the receipt of cash crop incomes, behaviour that he argues contributes to a ‘subsistence malaise’ that jeopardises food security.

10. Direct comparison is difficult as Waddell and Umezaki et al. omit some activities from their analyses, such as resting, preparing food and eating, and making artefacts. The results of Salisbury's (1962, pp. 217–19) time-budget analysis are even more difficult to compare and consider only men, while Grossman's (1984a) include a range of quite different cash-earning activities.

11. The women surveyed in the Was valley had charge on average of 3.8 pigs each (1.3 adult, 0.6 adolescent and 1.9 piglets) and 0.1 cassowaries.

12. The inefficiency issue arises only if one thinks of people producing pigs in the New Guinea Highlands. If one thinks of them instead as converters of waste into useful product, the discrepancy is less of a problem because, as numbers of pigs in a herd increase, so their daily ration falls, the waste produced by the household remaining the same (Sillitoe 2003, p. 315). In other words, if the people surveyed had different-sized pig herds, this need not reflect differing pig-keeping efficiencies, if they were varying the fodder fed to animals as herd sizes varied.

13. I am grateful to a reviewer of this paper for suggesting this table. Subsistence is defined as the following activities: gardening, harvesting, pig herding, hunting, gathering, firewood collection, construction work, artefact manufacture and procurement of raw materials.

14. Literally day uwk one, day uwk two, day uwk three; the word uwk is a numeral classifiers (Sillitoe in press).

15. The derivation of this word is unclear.

16. The days of the week are as follows: Horondon (‘big day’—Sunday), Kongonmubon (‘first work’—Monday), Kongonkabon (‘second work’—Tuesday), Kongontebon (‘third work’—Wednesday), Kongonmogon (‘fourth work’—Thursday), Waeswaeson (‘wash-wash’—Friday) and Horgenkon (‘little day’—Saturday).

17. According to Gell (1992, pp. 291–2) the Umeda people of the Western Sepik liken the moon to a tuber that varies in its growth cycle, as lunations vary in duration. I have never heard anyone allude to similar ideas in the Was valley.

18. The impact of the adoption of the Gregorian calendar varies across New Guinea. On the nearby Papuan Plateau it has had a considerable impact, perhaps due to the small and vulnerable population, Schieffelin (2002) associating it with missionary attempts to obliterate the indigenous past as an impediment to Christian conversion.

19. In the end, the only sure way I could determine the span of the seasons was to ask what the season was every month for a year and note responses in a diary. This brings to mind Turton and Ruggles’ (1978) account of disagreements among the Mursi of Ethiopia as to the month at any time.

20. Meggitt (1958, pp. 76–7) notes the same issue for the Enga but maintains that they keep the lunar and solar sequences in step using a thirteen-month year.

21. Few of us today, I venture, would subscribe to the idea of ‘static’ time or ‘timeless cultures’ (Bloch 1977; Munn 1992, pp. 98–100; Perkins 2001, pp. 92–100), as opposed to conceding and seeking formulations that represent different cultural insights and conceptions of time and its passage.

22. Gell (1992) puts considerable store by Gale's (1968) distinction of ‘A-series’ and ‘B-series’ time (A-series = past → present → future, and B-series = before vs. after). While the above Wola vocabulary might suggest an A-series conception of time, I think that there are other phrases that equally indicate a B-series before and after representation, such as ombez ombez and ereb ereb which are similar to English ‘long long ago’ and ‘far far future’.

23. Leach (1961, pp. 124–31) suggests a zigzag line while musing on Kachin and Greek conceptions of time.

24. They may extend this to bayaib bay, which is to do something. Another verb meaning ‘to do’ or ‘make’ is waeray but it applies to artefacts largely.

25. See Salisbury (1962, pp. 218–19) for comparative data on activities undertaken by men of different social standing, although they are difficult to interpret as the ‘big men’ suffered from considerable sickness during the survey.

26. Differences in age confound these comparisons to some extent, as does the relatively short duration of the survey in relation to the frequency of some activities—e.g. men's exchange activities are dictated to some extent by the occurrence of social events over which they have no control [such as deaths], consequently those occurring during the survey period influenced participants’ transactional activity in part.

27. Strathern (1988, p. 179) notes that the Melpa refer to ‘work’ as kongon too, and the word may conceivably have found its way into the Southern Highlands from the Hagen region. In the previous chapter of the same book she suggests abandoning the term labour and referring to purposive activity in the Hagen region because ‘there is no objectification of work apart from its performance...work cannot be measured separately of relationships’ (1988, p. 160).

28. It is the existence of money in our society that shows the productive and unproductive labour distinction is unhelpful, the receipt of a wage defining an activity as work. Individuals are contributing something to earn money, and cash has subsistence connections in that we all use a part of our incomes for this purpose.

29. The Baruya comment that work is something they forget as it belongs to the past, which is puzzling in applying the labour theory of value (Godelier 1977, p. 146), fits in with the interpretation ventured here.

30. While this paper draws on Arendt's (1998) phenomenological discussion of activity, it questions the distinction, which draws on deep-rooted European assumptions, between three forms of activity as fundamental to the human condition, namely biological labour, cultural work and social action. See Bonte (2004) for a recent critique of the capitalist focus on labour as the source of all value.

31. These are not inadequate or retarded men called ol dimb, who invariably do not marry either.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Sillitoe

Paul Sillitoe is a professor in the Anthropology Department at Durham University